Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1895. A Flood Channel.

Manawatu Herald, 11 June 1895, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1895. A Flood Channel.

The meeting at Moutoa on Saturday turned out very differently to what was expected. The members of the River Board had been led to expect that they would have been met with some well thought out suggestions by the Shannon settlers, and that one o! the Manawatu Railway. Company's engineers would have been present with some data. As an actual fact Mr Wallace asked the Board members what they had to propose, and he and his friends learnt more from Mr Nye by a long way than was learnt from them, which was certainly turning the tables upon the Board. It is evident the proposals to do something, coming from Shan* non, are very crude. The scheme to provide an overflow cut loomed up much larger in cost than it ap~ pears had been anticipated, and there seemed a pardonable hesitancy in providing the sinews of war for even the preliminary investigation, which must be made before any

scheme can be submitted to the public. On the face of the proposals it is shewn that any expense incurred for this purpose should be borne proportionately by all who would benefit by the Wotk being done* Which would mean all residents from the Gorge to the mouth of the Manawatu River, and all dwellers near the banks of the Oroua and Pohangina Rivers. If these persons are not inclined to help their brethren neater the mouth, then, as Mr 0. Gardner said* those nearest the mouth were the best off, as the water would leave them the soonest. tf the settlers in a lesser area like to do the work, well and good, it is within their power, but it becomes a serious question to them whether it is Within the power of theft purse. We ate afraid great lnkewarmness will be displayed by a number of the the settlers from the fact such large floods are infrequent visitors, and putting this and that together, they will be inclined to bear the ills they have than to fly to those they know not of. Dealing with an immense mass of water is no child's play, and serious risks are attaching to it. Still the meeting, if well attended, may exhibit more interest in these proposals than appears to be the case at present. Mr Wallace made one thing clear, which was, so far as he knew the Railway Company had glvett no ex* preesiou of their opinion as to the proposed outfall, or their desire to establish a River Board on their side of the river. An attempt will be made to set them to Snow their hand-, which •is important-, as they hold 80,000 acres liable. to flood. On this depends much, atid their engineer might uissiftata tile idea which prevails that all the embanking on the South side of the river would be useless to save their land from flood. The reasons given being that into the swamp run one or two rivers, the Tokomaru being one, which during a flood in the Manawatu is generally also in flood, though not always so. If the project of embanking the South bank was successful so as to exclude the waters of the Manawatu River, it must be evident that no water coming from the hills through tne swamp could escape, floodgates being blocked by the heighth of the water in the Manawatu, so that as long as the flood was even bank high in the Manawatu, the low land on the banks of the Tokomaru, being the whole of the Company's swamp, would be flooded by their own water. If this should be so, and without diversion of these streams we cannot see how it is to be altered, of what good would be the expense of embanking the flood water of the Manawatu ?

There is just one other point to offer for consideration. It appears evident that to prevent any lands on the Manawatu watershed being flooded ample provision must be made to carry away the mass of water which rises at the Gorge, some 70 feet in 24 hours, in exactly the same time as it rises at that point. The water does not come down the river in that wall, because it has low land on which to spread, but if all stray water was confined to the river channel tbat is the problem which has to be dealt with, for embankineut of all the low land means the confinement of the channel, and the heighth of the water confined in the Gorge will be the heighth all down the river. The work can be done, nothing is impossible, the great question being whether the cost will be justified by the improvement. To ascertain this a very large expense in surveys and levels would have to be incurred, much larger than appears to be anticipated. We hope the Committee appointed on Saturday will get a rough estimate of this so as to guide them as to what funds would be necessary to raise to carry their in* vestigations to a point on which the schema could be considered apart from personal opinions.